With Nick Jones's Soho Warehouse opening next year, Downtown’s march toward gentrification is taking off like gangbusters. With authentic loft style living and former industrial warehouses aplenty, the neighbourhood still feels like a pre-sanitised New York from the 70s - for now. On June 25, the US Bank Tower, currently ‘the tallest skyscraper in the West’, is opening a restaurant and observation deck on the 71st floor with its very own glass slide. Riders will coast 45 feet from the 70th floor to the 69th floor, encased in glass an inch and a quarter thick that will jut out from the skyscraper 1000 feet above downtown LA.

Booming construction of glossy projects like the Broad museum continues apace while art galleries are popping up all over the place, Hauser, Wirth & Schimmel's Arts District opening being the most notable. With exhibition spaces in London, New York and Zurich, it's a statement to the rest of the world that, as a global art metropolis, Los Angeles has arrived.

Downtown LA has pretty much always had gay bars, but these days the gays in the know have jettisoned WeHo for bars and clubs like Precinct, Redline and Mattachine. A fake giant redwood tree is on display at the lovingly restored Clifton's cafeteria, originally from the 1930s, while Ace hotel, above, has one of the best rooftops in town, up high amongst the twinkling time capsule that is DTLA.